Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Personal Aside: A New Format Where YOU Can Comment On Line…The Massachusetts Miracle: Is it for Real?

New Format!

My great webmeister has fashioned a new format for us which will make it far easier to comment online than it has heretofore. Take a look at this today and remember we’re still working on taking the bugs out of it. It’s sorely needed—especially the Readers’ Comments portion. I purposely made it difficult to respond online because there was a creep who was writing obscene stuff and my grandchildren read this. So for the past weeks, you’ve been good enough to respond to me via my personal email. I think this problem is going to be ironed out with this new format. But again, patience as Jake works out the details.

Massachusetts Miracle?

As you have heard, wonder of wonders, the Republican candidate for the U. S. Senate, Scott Brown is…according to some polls…within an eyelash of overtaking the Democratic candidate, Attorney General Martha Coakley in the special election of Jan. 19 to fill the Ted Kennedy vacancy. If the Republican wins in this bluest of all blue states, the drum roll will begin in earnest, signaling a formal end to the huzza era of Barack Obama liberalism.

However I want to caution readers that the sudden emergence of the special election on the nation’s radar is just the thing that could tip the results to Coakley. The way to win elections like this is to sneak up on them. The sudden attention of the national media and the possibility of Democratic defeat will revitalize Democratic engines which have been idling. Democrats are planning to take a long time to certify the winner if Brown leads in the ballot counting so as to delay his entry into the Senate as the 41st senator. And of course the usual Democratic mantra requiring you to bring out your hankie is au currant. Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Ted, has sobbed her way onto the TV screens by burbling that the sainted Ted is looking down from above and hoping the Dems will win.

And Bill Clinton is wheezing up the path to hold a rally for Coakley. So is John (of “why the long face?”) Kerry, ailing from a hip replacement who has just checked the stock averages and, finding Heinz catsup up, is so excited he is falling in love with wife Teresa all over again.

They may well snatch victory but no matter what happens, if the Democrats have to work up a sweat to carry the Kennedy seat in Massachusetts, there’s a new day dawning.

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*: Feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers. This Hilary was a man. A convert to Catholicism through his study of the Bible, a self-taught theologian, he had been married before his conversion and his wife was still alive when, over his objection, he was elected (in those days that was de rigeur bishop of Poitiers in AD 350. Gutsy from the start, Bishop Hilary nixed attending a synod in Milan called by Emperor Constantius in 355 where all bishops were required to sign a condemnation of St. Athanasius for Athanasius’ rejection of Arianism. As result Hilary was condemned by a group of Arian bishops and was exiled by the Emperor to Phyrgia in modern day Turkey. Hilary loved fighting for the faith and downed Auxentius in a public debate in Milan. Debating made him recognized as one of the prime defenders of the Church as well as the leading theologian of his time. He was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1851.

About Tom

Thomas F. Roeser is radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher and former VP of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. A former John F. Kennedy Fellow, Harvard and Woodrow Wilson International Fellow, Princeton, N. J., Roeser is theauthor of the book Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott. To read more about Tom, Click here.